You have no idea how much I have missed writing. Not only the writing process itself, but even just having the time and psychic space necessary to sit with myself long enough for it all to pour out and come together. Right now I am sitting in on Rachel’s violin lesson with my laptop, which I brought with me so I could attempt to keep up with my work correspondence. Even though the icons in the lower right hand corner of my screen are telling me I am connected to some local wireless internet source (a mysterious wasteland to me at best), I cannot pull up my browser, and my email refuses to either send or receive. Flexible person that I am, I seized the opportunity to write instead of fighting with the cyber void.

From my seat on this second-hand couch in this classroom/youth lounge in the church where Rachel has her lessons, and later tonight, in a larger room, her weekly youth orchestra rehearsal, I am privy to a quintessential winter scene outside. There is still plenty of snow on the ground from Saturday night’s storm. The clouds are high but beginning to thicken, and looming with a darkness that foretells of the next wave, due around midnight. Even so, there is a wan slice of late afternoon sunlight breaking through the clouds just above the horizon, from behind the branches of the large neighborhood tree, my view of which is perfectly framed by the edges of the window, a striking arboreal silhouette. I find this kind of picture to be one of the richest gifts of this stark and frigid time of year – how many shades of white, blue, and grey can there possibly be? I would never find this palette satisfying during any other season, but these few minutes have been like a visual feast.

In this calm before the storm, I submit to the admittance that this has not been an easy year. On top of the fact that my family is negotiating the bulky and uncomfortable transition of letting go of one adored offspring, and I am walking my own musical labyrinth toward I know not what, I have taken on one year-long working assignment that is siphoning too much out of me and failing to satisfy me. In my typical fashion, I have been battling with, instead of listening to, my twice-weekly inner experience of engaging in this project. Every week, as I approach Monday and then again Friday, my step lags and I feel a sinking sensation in my stomach. I think they call it dread.

I have never thought of myself as an optimist. I do not tend to look on the brighter side of things, except when faced with someone who is looking at the decidedly darker end of the continuum, in which case I usually feel called upon to find the more luminous lining. Yet, amazingly, I find myself doggedly showing up, week after week, dragging along the frail yet stubborn hope that I may suddenly stumble into some kind of love affair with this work. In my more desperate moments I have sworn that after I wrap this up in June I will walk away from it forever. Yet two weeks ago, when I had to indicate my plans for next year, I found myself unable to make it final on paper. “Surely we can make this work!” some inner voice sings (or is it whining?) in my ear.

As I write this, I can see the theme that is crying out for my attention. How many times in my life have I forced myself to do something because my intellect judges it to be good and I am capable of carrying it out, ignoring all the while a tiny voice inside me that is saying, “But. I. don’t. like. this.” Bully that I am with myself, I have driven myself straight into many a situation without it even dawning on me to hold an inner committee meeting first. Even once it becomes clear that we’re not looking at what you would call a good fit, my self-appointed internal judge and jury has usually insisted, tyrannically, on saying yes to the next offer, and again to the next. “C’mon!” the court-cheerleader is stridently urging my square self, “Keep it up! You’ll nestle into this round hole soon!”

Warning: Please brace yourself for what may seem like an about-face. In all honesty, I am actually very glad I accepted this position. And, in my own defense, I did confer with myself, heart to heart (okay, I know I only have one heart, but you know what I mean), before agreeing to it way back in August. I admit, I only had about one week to decide, because it was offered to me on short notice, so it was a rush job. But the truth is that I could never have known what it was going to be like without just doing it. And if I had said no and moved into autumn the way I had been planning, I know I would have been annoyed with myself, many times over, for not having been willing to try it. I have no doubt of that, knowing myself as I do.

What’s more, I’m good at it – certainly not stellar, since, after all, I am a novice at it, and I have made plenty of mistakes along the way – but in general people are happy with the job I’m doing. And even I can see the results, and they’re good! My co-workers seem to accept me as one of them, and I by no means have a corner on the market when it comes to my complaints about the challenges that are part of the package. In fact, my colleagues are bending over backwards to help me, so I feel very supported, and those that have come to observe me have complimented me, saying I’m doing a good job. It’s hard but it’s not bad. There is a difference. So what’s the problem?

I had a rabbi who once said to me, “The content is not the issue.” Truer words have rarely been spoken! As much as it always seems that it is these particular circumstances, whatever they are, that are causing the problem, it is always my view of and reaction to them at the heart of the matter. I could list for you the details that continue to make my work difficult, but that is not what is at issue here.

Regardless of the fact that Dan and I are now paying for our FAFSA-determined share of college tuition and we are happy to have the added income, that my learning curve is greatly enhanced by this new venture and I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to grow from it professionally, that I am doing something good and that is a pleasant feather in my cap, and that it is possible it could grow into something even greater over time; regardless of all that is good about it, it is simply not where I want to be putting my energy.

You probably don’t know that I used to be a bookkeeper. It was before the computer age, so I would have to go through a considerable updating process to return to that line of work, but I could do it. I am a perfectionist (NO! you are exclaiming, in shock. I know. But I digress.) so I was a darn good bookkeeper, accounting for every penny, and it always came out right at the end of the week. I could do it again, but that is not where I want to be putting my energy either.

Okay, this is where I am cringing inside. The battering voice rises up, and I will share it with you. Who-the-hell-are-you, it rumbles, that-you-get-to-be-so-discriminating? Other-people-would-be-grateful-for-a-job-like-this.

Well, I am grateful. And I want to move in a different direction, even if (and here’s where I feel defenseless against the voice-with-hyphens) I don’t know exactly which, yet. I love writing this blog and would like to try my hand at writing something bigger than a blog. I gave up a career in folk music years ago, but would like to take my music into new venues and new rooms and begin to create a meaningful connection with new listeners. I have for years wanted to bring the arts into the corporate domain to nurture the hearts and right brains of people whose left brains are very effective, to see what could be cultivated. You should see the pile of books I continue to check out from the library on paper and fiber arts – I am itching to get my hands on color and texture and see what I can do! I completed the first round of training a couple years ago to teach people how to improve their visual acuity through relaxation and good ocular habits, and found I loved working one on one with clients, something else I would like to expand upon.

And here’s the thing that came to me as I wrote the above. Yes, I’m busy – too busy – right now. Yes, I have too many pans in the fire. And yes, that’s an old and familiar pair of shoes. (Not to mention the obvious fact that I could add many more pans. Or shoes. I’m not sure which metaphor I’m carrying here.) And, probably like most people, I don’t always love everything I have (over-) committed to. But that is not the issue. As true as it is, and as much as I have repeated that history, it is still just a deeper layer of the content.

What lies even deeper than that is the fact that I know what I need to do and I keep resisting it because my mind thinks it knows better. But how can I allow my mind to rule on its own, without tapping into my heart and intuition? Surely creativity and wisdom spring from something more than mere intellect. Six weeks from tomorrow I will turn 57. My father’s father took up oil painting in his 50s and died in his 60s. What am I waiting for?

What am I waiting for?

Permission.

From whom?

I am finishing this writing a day later. The snow came upon us last night with gusto, with a whipping wind and such cold that the dry white drifts squeaked under our boots and tires today. That serene and achingly spare glimpse of winter beauty that bequeathed itself to me lasted but a few moments and then yielded to sunset, which yielded to darkness lit by a clear crescent moon, which yielded to more clouds, which emptied themselves upon us in a fury, all through the rest of the night and most of this day. Not one of them asked for permission from anywhere, neither the clouds nor the moon, neither the sun nor the tree. Each played its part with both grace and passion. And acceptance, that divine gift of nature. Thank you, God, for helping me pay attention and for making me teachable.

I have always loved dates like today’s: 10/10/10. My first memory of such a date was June 6, 1966, only days before I graduated from the 6th grade, which made the day feel personally special. And in that morning’s paper was an article about twin girls who were celebrating their sixth birthday that day. I think they lived on 6th Street in their town, with a zip or area code with numerous sixes in it. I was so excited by that.

I’m not the only one who finds things like that attractive and intriguing. Tonight Dan and Rachel and I will be attending a party. The host couple has commemorated the appropriate date for the past few years: 5/5/05, 6/6/06, etc. (As I am writing this, I just want to say that in five minutes it will be 10:10 on 10/10/10. Yes, my heartbeat accelerated just a wee bit as I typed that.) And remember when we could actually watch the numbers turning on our car speedometers turn over from 99.999 to 100,000? (Assuming your car made it that far. And let me just note here that one of our two cars still does have that old-fashioned mechanism.) And who of you knows what I mean by our golden birthday? That’s when you turn the age that is the same number as your birthday date. For me it was turning 22. Poor Rachel had to celebrate it on her 5th birthday, before she was old enough to understand it. At least the rest of us enjoyed it!

I don’t know if it was the stars and planets lining up because of this date approaching, or just coincidence (though I have to say I hardly believe in coincidence anymore), but I have intersected with three different threads from my past in the last two days. I feel a little stirred up by having so many memories and connections sparked by all three.

One was an email from someone I have not seen since Chloe was very young, I think even before Rachel was born. She was one in a circle of friends. Though the two of us were never super-close, as a group we were bonded. For me, one of the most significant ways in which she affected my path was after I had written a particular song, back in my active folk performing days. It was such a personal song that I could not imagine anyone understanding it, let alone identifying with it, which made me very reluctant to sing it in concert.

I’ll back up a little here to try to describe what it used to feel like for me to perform a new original song for the first time. Somewhere pretty early in my solo career I was practiced enough that I was never very nervous in concert. I really enjoyed the interaction I had with my audiences, and felt like I could ride that energy and have a very relaxed, fun, and also meaningful exchange with them from the stage. But performing a brand new song was nerve-wracking by nature. There was always the strong possibility of forgetting words or messing up a guitar part, as it just wasn’t completely a part of me yet. If it was a song I had recently written then there was even more heaped on top of that normal anxiety. One aspect was that it felt like I was exposing something about myself. (Usually this was justified, because I was!) This always made me feel like I was taking off all my clothes and performing naked, it was such a fragile thing to share from my heart this way. Another piece was that I was always, at that point in the life cycle of a song, totally in love with this newest piece of work, and desperately wanted everyone to share in that love. It was not unlike whipping up a self-invented delicacy and wanting everyone to feel deep rapture while eating it. And finally, there was the precedence set by my previous songs, and the fear that perhaps this one would fail to live up to a higher expectation. Rather lofty, and clearly daunting on all counts, though also clearly self-created and perpetuated.

So back to my friend and my newest song. This particular work had been forcefully ejected from me by a powerful muse, and though I kept running away from it mid-stream (literally leaving the room right in the middle of composing it, hoping to escape the painful birthing process of those verses), I was consistently marched back to the drawing table by something far stronger than my own urges, until it was finally completed. I had never experienced such a wrenching creation process. I truly felt I had written a song against my will. It took over a month before I had the courage to play it for one other person. I was attending a music conference and found a willing audience in a fellow songwriter. She sat on my hotel bed as I sang it. When I finished and looked up at her, she asked me if I would sing it again, which I did. I think she had me sing it a third time before we talked about it. Agony. But she liked it. Very much.

So finally a month later I decided to debut it at a small concert in an intimate setting. My friend, along with a few others from our circle, sat in the audience. It was her face that gave me the courage to start, execute, and finish it. And again the response was good. So it became part of my repertoire and eventually the title song of the next album, though I never would have foreseen that! And two days ago, after years of silence between us, she emailed that she had been thinking of me and listening to my music and felt like reaching out to me. It was like a little electrical jolt to see her name there on my screen after all that time. What do you say to a friend, fifteen years later? So I answered her, with a brief update, and will see what is to follow.

Earlier that same day, I had had a cup of tea with an old high school friend. Similarly, we had never been close when we were in school together, but we had gotten to know each other and had a few classes together. Though on a different schedule, as I graduated a year ahead of my class and then took time off to record and travel with my band, we graduated from our hometown university at the same time.

Three months ago I was part of a concert that deliberately featured music from three differing styles of music, held in a small art gallery. I was wearing my singer-songwriter cap for the first time in a long while. Since this performance was being given in a new location for this series, I sent out an email announcement to try to generate a little more interest, as ticket sales were slow. As a result I knew several people in the small audience. Greeting people before the show, I was very surprised and pleased to find myself saying hello to this high school friend. After living on the east coast for a few decades, she and her husband had recently moved back here, where most of her family had remained. We agreed to get together.

Circumstances being as they are, it took until late last week for that to work out. We had such a lovely quiet time together, exploring where our paths had led us through all these years, and sharing what we are navigating in the present. I am sure we will see more of each other. And she may even become my neighbor, as she and her husband are house-hunting in my neck of the woods. I came home with a little excited flutter. All these years that I have been a mother raising two kids, I have shared much with many friends, felt nurtured in several communities, and Dan and I have grown many new friendships. Somehow this single hour over a cup of red berry tea felt new, like the beginning of a fresh chapter that put me in the center instead of my children or my relationship with them. I pictured inviting this friend and her husband over for dinner, Dan cooking up a gourmet meal, and the four of us enjoying each other’s company as grown-up friends. It’s not that this hasn’t happened at all in the past 18 years (though I have to admit it hasn’t happened with great frequency!) It’s just that the image conjured itself up and it excited me with its sense of promise. That is definitely new.

The third brush with my past came yesterday afternoon in the form of a get-together to remember a recently passed co-worker and friend. I spent my college years working in a local restaurant. My fellow waiters, bartenders and managers were some of the most intelligent, creative and fun people I have ever known, and many after-hours were spent in each others’ company during those years. The restaurant business often attracts people who are on their way to something, and this group was no exception. In our midst were future doctors, lawyers, artists, scientists, mountain climbers, dancers, actors, writers, poets, teachers, and many more. Our beloved manager died last month of cancer. His mother and his brothers celebrated his life – and what would have been his 64th birthday – at his mother’s house, serving the same food we dished up when we all worked together.

It is always such a bittersweet thing, these gatherings. I cannot help but find myself thinking, “Why couldn’t we have had this party while he was still here?” And yet I do not want to diminish the gift of having had that time yesterday with these people who all cared deeply for this sweet man we all called a friend. It was a treat to find out what everyone has been doing all these years, to see how well everyone is aging, who remembers what, and who is still connected to whom. There were, of course many people missing from our circle, some due to other commitments and some because we have lost touch.

Okay. So now it’s time for true confessions. I came home with my mind swirling. Even today I am calming down from the dizzying effects of over-stimulation. As fondly as I remember those years, they were also some of the most despondent in my life, fraught with uncertainty about myself in the world, desperately lonely even when I was surrounded by people, trying hard to be someone I wasn’t, and being hit over the head repeatedly with the lesson that I could only be myself, yet refusing to learn it until decades later. All of the unhelpful and hopeless tapes that were helplessly recorded in my subconscious back then have been trying to pull themselves back into the forefront (wherever the forefront of my sub-conscious could be) since last night, and my very grey matter is tired, all the way to the tips of my just-as-grey hairs.

Sitting here writing this, I also find myself pulling something else together. A few days ago, after a hard day of teaching beginning violinists, I asked the universe to offer the guidance of a few clearer signposts. (Interesting. I had to correct my mistyped word “soundposts.”) Everyone at the party, my out-of-the-blue email, and my tea date, everyone asked me if I’m still doing music. Yes. But what music did they mean? The last each of these people knew me, I was a folksinger, not a violinist in a baroque orchestra, taking and teaching private lessons.

Just this week I picked up the guitar, for the first time in quite awhile, and a new thought began to come forth. There is no extra energy or time in my life these days to set up a solo folk concert and do all that is necessary to publicize it. Could I put a show together and show up and do it? Absolutely, with pleasure. But performing is not just giving a concert to an audience. In fact, that part, which is the most rewarding and fun, is in many ways the easiest part. So now it suddenly came to me: what if I were to pick one song and work on it, at my own pace, up to performance/recording level? And then I could employ our little digital camcorder and post it on Facebook or YouTube, or both, and let my friends know about it, just to be able to connect to people with my music in some way. It’s not that I have no desire to play the very music around which my entire life revolved for all those years, now in my present tense. It’s that while I was resting from it, and raising my children, the world – and in particular the folk industry – continued to evolve, and I cannot step back into it without a major commitment on a lot of levels. It would be hard to do it in a micro or fractional way. This is the first inspiration I have had to move back out into the public as a soloist, just a little bit.

Just last week I read an article about a singer who goes into corporate settings and rallies these business people in meetings to sing together! Not surprisingly, it has helped co-workers deal with conflicts, stuck energy, and many other challenges in the workplace. Just before I left the stage and the touring circuit, this was an idea I had had, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to pull it together and market it. Reading about this woman rekindled that question – could I work with local companies? I would love to provide some inspiration to grown-ups who do not have enough music in their lives.

So here I sit, my mind reeling with questions. For my own sake (and to contribute to your possible boredom or at least overwhelm) I will try to articulate them. The big one: what am I being called to do? (This might be an appropriate place to mention that last week I went to the library and checked out a book about finding and following your calling. What attracted me to this book six days ago?) A smaller and more immediate one: can I quiet the noise in my head and find some stillness? It is out of that stillness that I am usually able to identify something to do just right now, in the short run.

So with that I will close for today. First, I will do the mundane and necessary thing that string players must do often, which is to clip my nails so I can practice. And then I will practice. And after lunch I will lie down and breathe, and do my best to let everything fall away for a short time. I have a lecture and a concert to attend – as an audience member and friend of the performer – and then a 10/10/10 party to attend. With dear friends I have known for decades and care very much about. Hmmm. Recurring theme a la mode.

Yesterday, after several tense weeks, Chloe finally received the email announcing her freshman roommate and her dorm assignment. Now she has one more tangible piece of the year ahead that she can place in the puzzle before her. Only somewhat tangible, however. She found her roommate on Facebook and sent a message along with a friend request. The latter was granted, but as of eighteen hours later, there is no return message. Okay, the girl is apparently at Disneyland right now, and was up late last night. We assume she friended Chloe on her iPhone and went to bed. As Chloe pointed out, it’s simultaneously fun and creepy to fb-stalk someone. But we were happy to see that she plays violin and also likes the Beatles and Jason Mraz, so it can’t be bad! We’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that Chloe will move closer to the top of her list after she leaves the Magic Kingdom. And then they can talk about who will bring the mini-fridge and other domestic details.

For me the new degree of reality brings up a mass of tangled feelings and then the typical aftermath of thoughts, trying to sort it all out. Last night Dan and I joined friends for dinner and Chloe stayed home and had friends over for dinner and a movie. As we were seated in the Ethiopian restaurant, I had a sudden rush of awareness: tonight we are here and Chloe is at home, but in a few weeks, when we return home from anywhere we go, she won’t be there. After I rescued my stomach from the basement beneath my chair, I knew one thing for certain. This is no different from any other kind of grieving. There’s the over-the-top wallop of the loss itself, and then there’s the waves that hit you in any random moment, with no warning. I haven’t even had the wallop yet. These must be prelude-waves.

Before Chloe, I had a pregnancy that ended in miscarriage. Dan and I were overcome with sorrow, and then, of course – what else can you do? – we began to carry on with our lives. Two months after the miscarriage, I walked into the backstage dressing room of a concert hall and spontaneously burst into tears. Until I set foot in the dressing room, it had not dawned on me that months beforehand, I had pictured myself doing that concert in a maternity dress. Over the coming months, I came to understand that we walk through grief by mourning each micro-component of the whole. Every moment, every face, every thread that is attached to what we lost has to be met and felt.

It’s all around me. Last week Dan and I went to see “The Kids Are All Right” which had received good reviews and didn’t look too heavy. Little did we know that (and I don’t think it will ruin anything for any of you who have not seen it if I include this – but if you want to, you can skip this paragraph) the movie includes a main character who has recently graduated from high school and has only a few weeks left before she leaves for college. The parting scene shows her arriving on campus, dumping her stuff in her dorm room, saying good-by to her family and watching them drive off without her. Okay, was it really necessary for us to watch this right now?

And a few nights later I was at a party where Chloe was to play background music with a friend. I was chatting with another guest who is ahead of me by a few years. As if to refresh my memory of the movie I already wished I hadn’t just seen, she described her own experience of driving her daughter across several states, helping her unload into her dorm room, and saying good-by. “And then,” she continued, “I got into my car and began the drive home. I must have sobbed for two solid hours! And I was all alone. Or wait – was my mother with me for that trip…?” Oh great. I hope I remember that Dan is driving home with me someday years from now, when I am telling my story to some fragile wisp, trembling before me. Assuming we don’t have an accident, driving on the interstate while sobbing. Perhaps we’ll stay on the side roads for the first part of the journey.

I know, I know, I know. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, it’s wonderful. Yes, it’s necessary – and right. And I have lots to do in the seventeen days between now and our departure. And there is nothing to fix. There is no one dying. Heaven knows, I am well aware of the difference between my 80-year-old father passing away a year ago and my 18-year-old daughter embarking on the next chapter of her life’s adventures. And I am not alone. Dan and Rachel are moving through it in their own ways. I guess it’s also true to say that our family foursome is moving through it as a whole as well.

I remember that after Chloe was born, I figured out that adding a baby to a couple doesn’t just make three. It’s closer to exponential because you have to add the dynamics of all the relationships. So to begin with there were three relationships: Dan and his relationship with himself, my relationship with him, and my relationship with myself. Adding Chloe gave us four more – hers with herself, that between each of us with her, and the threesome. Adding Rachel gave us a myriad more, because it wasn’t just Rachel herself and Rachel with each of us. There were now “the girls”, “the kids”, “the grown-ups”, etc. Even though Chloe is not a “member” of each of those relationships, it affects all of them.

Everyone tells me that our relationships with Chloe will continue, but they will change, and I do believe that. It helps me to remember that our family has ridden the shockwaves of past transitions, and it has always been for the better. So yes, this is uncomfortable, and each of us has an occasional moment of squirming, flailing and/or writhing, but we are in it together, even as we are each negotiating an individual set of bumps and turns. I feel mighty fortunate to have such a strong set-up. In this moment, bolstered by what has just come clearer to me, I know we’ll all be okay. What is it they say – the only constant is change?

The mystery arose late last week. We were approaching the deadline to submit health forms to the medical clinic at Chloe’s college. In addition, we were asked to photocopy her insurance card and then fax all three pages to them. When I was Chloe’s age I used to love to fill out forms, but let us just say that she does not take after me in that respect. Simply put, there was procrastination – and not just on her part. I have to admit to having evolved to the point where I do not relish them anymore either. And Dan was busy with other things. Finally, two days before the deadline and hours before Chloe was to leave for the weekend, we hunkered down and with my guidance, she completed the task. I went to my wallet to pull out her insurance card, and discovered it was not in its designated slot.

Surprisingly, and with startling synchronicity, I had just gone through the same kind of sequence with Rachel earlier that same day, and with the same results. Rachel had been invited to join a school friend and her family on a road trip to the west coast, and we thought it would make sense to send her with at least a photocopy of her insurance card. As you have now guessed, when I went to my wallet said card was not there.

Hmmm.

So we backtracked. When was the last time I had seen either card? It was the week prior, when Rachel had gone with a different friend for a three-day outing (she has been quite the social butterfly and traveler this summer) and the friend’s mother had suggested she take the card with her, just in case. So I emailed said mother (I’ll call her Ursula) and asked her if she could return the card.

Ursula’s response appeared a little later: “I never had her insurance card.” What? Dan and I remembered the conversation clearly. I emailed back, telling her as much. (Nicely.) Later she emailed back, admitting that maybe she needed to check her purse again, and promised to get back to us afterward.

In the meantime, I was tracing our steps through recent weeks to remember when we had last used Chloe’s card. That was also no problem to recall. Two days before she and Rachel flew to Florida for a dance competition, I finally took her to the doctor to check out the two-plus-year-old pain in the ball of her foot, which turned out to be a stress fracture. (Another story, perhaps a future post.) She was new to that doctor’s clinic, so we had had to give her card at the front desk to allow the receptionist to photocopy it for their files. Had it been returned to me? I was pretty sure I remembered putting it back in my wallet.

As I reviewed the sequence of those days, I asked Chloe, “We didn’t send the insurance cards to Orlando with you and Rachel, did we?” She was sure we had not bothered, and I agreed. I had no memory whatsoever of handing them to anyone – either Chloe or their friends’ parents – as we met up with their fellow travelers at the airport. The trip was only for two days, and she hadn’t wanted to be responsible for carrying them. Dan concurred.

Another email from Ursula appeared: “I was thinking. Maybe the card looks like my insurance card and I missed seeing it. I’ll get back to you after I check again.”

A little perplexed, I called the clinic where Chloe’s foot was examined and explained the nature of my plight to the woman at the front desk. She was exceedingly sweet and very helpful. We spent ten minutes on the phone while she checked through the pile of abandoned insurance cards tucked away in a special corner of her drawer. Apparently this is not an unusual occurrence. Not finding it there, she continued to chat pleasantly with me as she combed every possible nook and cranny that might hold an unclaimed card. And when she failed to uncover it she was truly apologetic. I left my phone number with her just in case and said good-by to my new friend.

Dan ordered a new set of cards from our insurance company and we decided to wait another two days to fax Chloe’s health forms, just in case the old card turned up. By this time, my mind resembled the ball on the green and white table.

On one side of the net: Ping! “Am I going nuts?…”

Other side: Pong! “What a weird coincidence that both cards are missing at the same time…”

Ping! “I could swear I remember giving the card to Ursula…”

Pong! “I can’t believe we lost two cards in two different places in the same week…”

Chloe left for the weekend. Dan and I joined my mother for dinner in a noisy restaurant on the edge of town. We were waiting for Rachel’s call from some hotel in Las Vegas. Yes, my 13-year-old was spending the night in a resort casino hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Dan’s phone was on digital roam and Rachel was taking forever to call. By my admittedly long-distance reckoning, they should have arrived at the hotel hours ago. As we ordered and then dined, the image of the crash on I-15 was beginning to sketch itself in my mind. And of course, they don’t have Rachel’s health insurance card so they won’t know who they are treating in the emergency room. Assuming they are willing to treat her seeing as she has no card. I kept all this to myself so as not to worry Dan and my mother. Finally Dan’s phone rang.

Dan cupped his hands over his cell phone and his other ear. It was clearly not Rachel on the other end. At the end of a short conversation he chuckled lightly. “Okay, thanks for letting us know!” Probably not the ER.

It turns out Chloe’s cousin was aimlessly sifting through the contents of Chloe’s wallet sometime between dinner and the Shakespeare play. Hidden way in the back, stuffed safely in the midst of various gift cards from graduation two months ago, were the wayward health insurance cards.

(Rachel finally called us at home much later. They had indeed arrived hours before, but went swimming in the hotel pool before calling.)

What I find the most fascinating about this story is how none of us could piece together a complete memory of actually taking the insurance cards out of my wallet and handing them to Chloe who then stuffed them into hers. Dan and I remembered the conversation with Ursula, but not the upshot. And Ursula in turn began to doubt not only her memory but even the tangible hands-on search through her purse. Chloe and Dan and I could remember discussing whether to send the cards with Chloe, but not one of us had even a vague recall of the actual decision. And the receptionist at the medical center, who had no reason to remember the details of Chloe’s card – for all I know she wasn’t even working the day we came in – was totally open to the possibility that it was floating around there somewhere. It happens.

Dan is currently reading Why We Make Mistakes by Joseph T. Hallinan. From the little he has told me about it, it is the perfect companion to this episode, examining what we do and do not remember, and how we tweak our actual memories to fit our view of the present. I plan to read it when he is done, as I find the implications staggering. What does this tell us about eyewitnesses in a court case? Just a few weeks ago Chloe’s senior class did a production of “Twelve Angry Men” (it included women, of course, but I just don’t like the ring of “Twelve Angry Jurors” so I’m holding to the old, though gender-biased, title) and I wondered all the way through it, Would I be able to remember anything clearly enough to testify under oath? I don’t think so. Even as I am telling all of this to you I am very likely committing errors in the sequence, timing, and what people said, felt, and did. The gist is only as true as I can make it.*

And in the context of music, how well do I remember what my teachers told me to practice? How accurate is my understanding of their appraisals of my musicianship and skills? How well do I hear myself play? One of my teachers demonstrated for me that, while playing out of tune with terrible tone sounds – not surprisingly – terrible, playing out of tune with gorgeous tone sounds amazingly tolerable, even passing for, well, playing in tune. I’m obviously not campaigning for inaccurate pitch, but there is a kernel here that is immensely helpful to my paralyzingly perfectionistic self, and it goes something like the following.

Can I make a bargain with myself to practice all the ingredients – fingerings, shifting, articulation, phrasing, vibrato, dynamics, expression, etc. – and then let go of the belief that I need to micro-manage the performance? Can I apply the perfectionism selectively and use it “mostly/only” during practice sessions? In other words, if I do my homework long, hard, and well enough during the practicing and rehearsing, can’t I trust the muse to sprinkle a little magic on the stage the night of the concert? Assuming one is a good musician, how much of the performance is “fact” and how much is “illusion”? Is it really all about a million tiny details, or is the music greater than the sum of all its parts? I really do know the answer to that question.

I can now see that I always relied on the magic of the muse throughout the decades of my folk career, and she always proved herself to be reliable. So apparently I have piled all the perfectionism into the arena of classical music. Perhaps the learning curve that lies before me (or am I already ascending?) is to tear down the wall between those two worlds. I wonder who built the wall in the first place.

*With two disclaimers. Number one is that Chloe claims she did not procrastinate. She needed my help and I was busy, which is totally true. Number two is that after Dan read the above, he reminded me that we actually photocopied his insurance card and Rachel took that with her to the west coast. Here’s what’s perfect about this one: I have no memory of it!